


A Wedding and No Funerals

by Zakad



Series: All My Ghosts are at Rest [7]
Category: Bleach, Naruto
Genre: F/M, Gen, Happy Ending, Minor Character(s), Quincy Powers, time skip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2020-01-13 08:26:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18465205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zakad/pseuds/Zakad
Summary: Thanks to Ishida-sensei and his dedicated care, Yugao has had more time with Hayate than she had ever dared to hope. With a second deadly poison introduced to Hayate's system, Yugao once again turns to the foreign doctor for help. It will take a miracle for Hayate to survive.Luckily, Ishida-sensei comes from a long line of miracle workers.





	A Wedding and No Funerals

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place several years in the future and references events that haven't necessarily happened yet but will be written about eventually.

Yugao races through the village. She’s exhausted from the mission, from their narrow escape, from Hayate taking a blow meant for her, from carrying Hayate back to Konoha. She’s low on chakra and should have collapsed hours ago, but she can feel Hayate slowly fading away and pushes herself to go faster.

There are ANBU stationed outside her destination. At this time of night they should stop her, ask her about her business in the area, and steal the precious minutes Hayate has left.  But the ANBU know Yugao, know Hayate, and know what it must mean that she’s running away from the hospital toward a civilian house in the middle of the night. They stay out of her way.

The door slides open as she passes the property line. A warm rectangle of light cuts through the dark of her night. Yugao plunges forward but she’s finally slowing down, her body succumbing to its limits. She collapses in the entryway.

“Please, help,” she says. She can’t raise her head. Can’t see who is standing over her. But she knows someone is there.

“Why didn’t you go to the hospital?” asks Ishida-sensei. He’s gentle about it, but the scolding tone eases her heart more than he can know. Without it, she would know there’s no hope.

“They said the best they could do was stabilize him,” says Yugao. Her eyes are closed and her voice is weak. “You’ve overseen his treatment longest. Please, sensei.”

“I will try,” says Ishida-sensei. He pats her head gently and pulls away. “Kurosaki, make yourself useful. Put him in the room next to my workshop.”

Yugao feels Hayate being lifted from her back. She wants to protest. She wants to stay with him as long as she can, but she can do nothing.

Yugao’s mind drifts. Her body needs sleep, demands rest, but her heart is too fearful to let her slip off. She hovers in that liminal place between awake and unconscious. Eventually someone comes back for her. She’s picked off the floor and carried through the house and tucked into a futon like a child.

“You’re in the same room,” says an adult male, not Ishida-sensei so it must be Kurosaki. “When you wake up, you can see him for yourself. I’m going to get something to clean that cut.”

They wouldn’t let her sleep in the same room as a corpse. Yugao can smell blood but not death, not yet. It’s as much reassurance as she’s going to get tonight, and Yugao falls asleep without opening her eyes.

Time passes. The sun rises. Yugao wakes up before her body is ready, but anxiety eats away at her dreams and she has to know. She forces her eyes open.

Hayate is lying on a futon close to hers. His eyes are closed. She can see the fluttering of his pulse at his throat. It’s not exactly a good sign for his pulse to be racing that fast, but it means he’s still alive.

Yugao’s too drained to sit up, but she rolls onto her side and reaches for his hand lying on top of the futon. The sword calluses on his fingers and palm match her own. His skin is clammy and chill but not cold, not yet. 

“Hey.”

The familiar rasping croak draws Yugao’s attention to Hayate’s face. He’s looking at her. He’s awake.

“Hey,” says Yugao. Her voice is little better, but she can feel herself smiling.

“What happened to your head?” he asks.

Yugao can feel a bandage on her forehead. Hazy memories from the night before come back to her. She had made into the house and collapsed in the footwell. “I think I hit my head on the raised floor.”

“Where are we?” asks Hayate.

A third person says, “The Uzumaki Residence.”

Yugao starts. Hayate’s eyes widen but he doesn’t move. He doesn’t have the strength to react to a threat. Not that the owner of that voice is threat to either of them. 

Yugao turns her head and sees Kakashi-taicho lounging against the wall next to the door. His posture looks relaxed, but Icha-Icha is nowhere in sight and his gaze never wavers from Hayate’s futon. He’s keeping vigil.

“Ishida-sensei went to the hospital to see what they had and to run some tests of his own,” he explains.

“Am I…” Hayate trails off into a cough and when he can speak again, finishes with, “going back to the hospital?”

_ Going back to die _ , Yugao’s mind translates and her heart screams,  _ no! _

“You’re not moving,” says Kakashi flatly.

Yugao doesn’t know what that means. She wants it to mean that there’s nothing the hospital can do, so he’s staying under Ishida-sensei’s direct supervision until Hayate improves. She’s afraid it means Hayate is too weak to move and taking him to the hospital will only kill him faster.

“What happened?” asks Kakashi distracting her from her thoughts.

Yugao slowly explains getting trapped in Earth Country—missing both Hayate’s initial treatment appointment as expected and the follow-up appointment she had made him schedule for the day they were due back—and the ever-increasing increasing number of Iwa-nin hunting them. Finally, the pair thought they were free only to run into Oto-nin in Grass Country. 

The genin who faced Sound-nin in the Chunin Exam were lucky in a way. They had no preconceived notions of how shinobi outside the village fought. Sound attacks are new and strange and hard to fight. It took energy the pair didn’t have to kill all of the Oto-nin.

In addition, at least one of the enemy shinobi had been armed with poisons created by Orochimaru or Kabuto. Hayate had taken an attack meant for her, and when Yugao tried to heal it with chakra, the wound closed but the poison spread further. Their only hope lay in getting to Konoha before it was too late. Yugao had had to carry Hayate for the last stretch.

“You did your best in a difficult situation,” says Kakashi-taicho. He’s trying to be comforting. That’s more frightening than anything else.

The door slides open next to him revealing Kurosaki. He’s got several cups balanced on a tray. He shoves a mug of steaming tea into Kakashi’s hands and sets two other cups down next to Yugao. One is the disgusting electrolyte-drink stocked by the hospital. The other is plain water. The final cup is full of ice chips.

“Open,” says Kurosaki.

Hayate obediently opens his mouth and Kurosaki feeds him chipped ice. Yugao is irrationally jealous. She can barely move her arms. She’s even more jealous when Kurosaki leaves the room and gives the cup of ice to Kakashi-taicho to administer. Yugao grimly reaches for the electrolyte-drink. She’s going to put every effort into kick-starting her recovery.

It’s late afternoon when Ishida-sensei returns from the hospital. In the meanwhile, Kurosaki has kept their drinks replenished, given Kakashi a sandwich, and Yugao a cup of broth. He also brings Yugao a big, lumpy pillow he calls a  _ beanbag chair _ when she tries to sit up on her own, and now she’s got enough height on Hayate that she can feed him ice when he asks for it. Yugao thinks about how grateful she is and not about how much paler Hayate looks or how often he coughs or the worried children she can see whenever Kurosaki opens the door.

Ishida-sensei’s expression when walks in isn’t enough to kill Yugao’s hopes entirely. But that’s because Yugao is stubborn and refuses to see the truth.

“What’s the verdict, sensei?” asks Hayate.

Ishida-sensei kindly waits for Hayate to stop coughing and says, “The poison absorbs chakra and uses it to multiply. It is slowly draining your energy. It has combined with the poison already in your system already to produce a similar effect. I suspect it will do the same with any foreign chemical introduced to your system but not to your betterment.”

Yugao closes eyes to hold back her tears and grips Hayate’s hand. Any cure they try will only kill him faster.

“How long?” asks Hayate.

“Two days,” says Ishida-sensei. “Longer if you enter the hospital and have the fluid in your lungs constantly drained but not long enough to find a cure.”

Yugao opens her eyes. “Two days is plenty of time to get married. We can have the ceremony tomorrow and take the next day off for our honeymoon.”

Hayate looks at her in wide-eyed awe. Not even the coughing fit shakes his gaze. “Yugao, I’m going to die.”

“Don’t you want to marry me?” asks Yugao.

“Yes, but—”

Yugao puts her hand over his mouth and kisses the back of her hand lightly. It’s a silly habit from when Hayate’s coughing resurges and he’s irrationally afraid he’s going to infect her with the same poison that’s killing him. With this unknown poison, they can’t take any risks, but the emotion the gesture conveys is unfiltered.

“Then we’re getting married,” says Yugao. “Do you mind if we have the ceremony in your house, Ishida-sensei? Kurosaki-san? Ishida-sensei?”

The doctor is staring at them with a conflicted expression. He glances over his shoulder at Kurosaki, who had slipped into the room with more liquids for the recovering pair.

Kurosaki shrugs. “It doesn’t bother me. And it’s not like anyone here can report you to  _ Soul Society. _ ”

Yugao is fairly certain that he’s not talking about her hastily made wedding plans, but she’s not sure what else he could mean.

Ishida-sensei sighs and looks back at Hayate. “I can cure you.”

Hayate is too stunned to speak. Yugao does it for them both. “What?”

Ishida-sensei holds up his hand. “It’s not a medical solution. But I can…forcibly adopt you into my clan and resolve the issue that way.”

That sounds suspicious as hell. “Do it,” says Yugao.

“How?” asks Hayate.

Ishida-sensei glances at Kakashi-taicho, who hovers anxiously in the corner. He rolls his shoulders as if shaking off a weight and returns his attention to Hayate. 

“I have an ability that is not chakra-based but is similar to a kekkei genkai. It allows me to manipulate energy. I can use that energy to purify your body in the same manner that I removed the cursed seal from Sasuke. But to cure you completely, I will need to replace your lungs. Using that much energy will make you into a Quincy like the Ishida or Kurosaki,” explains Ishida-sensei. 

“Do it,” repeats Yugao. His every word is slow and deliberate chosen with care. He’s talking around something huge, but Yugao doesn’t really care if it will keep Hayate alive.

“Is there a catch?” asks Hayate.

“You’ll have to hear about all the Quincy family drama,” says Kurosaki. “It’s part of why we came to Elemental Countries.”

“Do it,” insists Yugao. It’s not like they’ll ever leave the Elemental Countries.

“If I heal you with my power, then I will also be able to kill you by removing my power, which I can do instantly from anywhere,” explains Ishida-sensei.

Yugao doesn’t hesitate. “Do it.”

“Okay,” says Hayate.

Ishida-sensei looks at him. “I must insist that you do not join ANBU once you are healed. I do not want my family’s power tied to Konoha in that way.”

“That’s fine,” says Yugao. She looks at Hayate. “Tell him that’s fine.”

“I can accept that,” says Hayate.

Ishida-sensei sighs heavily. “Very well. Yugao-san, let go of his hand.”

Yugao reluctantly sets down Hayate’s hand. Ishida-sensei places his glasses in his coat pocket and sets the coat aside. Kurosaki hurries to the windows and closes all of the curtains. Then he swoops down and picks up Yugao and carries her over to the far corner despite all her protests. It barely appeases her that Kurosaki herds Kakashi-taicho into the same corner.

Ishida-sensei kneels next to Hayate and pulls back the sheet covering him. He places one hand on Hayate’s chest. Yugao can’t quite see from her angle, and Kurosaki won’t set her down, but she gets the impression Ishida-sensei’s eyes are fixed on Hayate. Hayate’s are certainly fixed on the doctor.

“How long have we known each other?” asks Ishida-sensei. The question is casual, but his tone is intent.

“Years,” says Hayate. “I was one of your first patients.”

“Do you trust in my ability to heal?” asks Ishida-sensei. There is a faint silver glow surrounding the doctor.

“Yes,” says Hayate and the glow becomes a ghostly flame. 

“Do you have faith in my ability to heal you?” asks Ishida-sensei. The flames have concentrated around his arms.

“Yes,” says Hayate and the flame spreads over him.

“Do you have faith in me?” asks Ishida-sensei. The ghostly flame is solid now. Licks of silver-blue fire flare brightly around his and Hayate’s bodies connecting them.

Yugao turns her head to catch Kakashi-taicho’s gaze. His one-eyed stare is as wide as her own. Whatever that silver-blue light is, he can see it too. She glances up at Kurosaki. There are silver flames reflected in his eyes. 

Kurosaki looks down at her. No, the flames aren’t reflected in his eyes. The flames are coming from inside him. Yugao is certain of it though she doesn’t know how. Kurosaki winks a silvery eye at her then returns his gaze to Ishida-sensei. Yugao feels a little less frightened knowing someone with that sort of unearthly power can still wink and joke like a regular human.

“Yes,” says Hayate.

The flames around Ishida-sensei and Hayate flare bright and high. There’s no heat, but an immense pressure fills the room. Yugao can feel it pressing her tight to Kurosaki’s chest. But she can also feel something pushing back, shielding her from the worst of it. Kakashi-taicho has no such protection. He falls to his knees with a groan.

Yugao is frightened for Hayate again. He’s a skilled swordsmen, one of the best in the Elemental Countries, and he would be a full jounin if not for his illness. But Kakashi-taicho is one of the strongest shinobi in the village, and he is on his knees. It would be better if Yugao could see what was happening, but the ghost-fire is too bright.

“My son, your faith has made you well,” says Ishida-sensei. But it’s not Ishida-sensei’s voice. It’s a loud, booming voice made up of a chorus of thousands, and the room shakes trying to contain it.

Abruptly, the fire dies, becoming a faint ghost of itself, and withdrawing at last into Ishida-sensei and into Hayate. Ishida-sensei pulls back his hand and leans away from the futon. Hayate sits up.

Hayate’s cheeks bloom with color. The constant bags under his eyes have faded to nothing. His chest rises and falls easily without catching on a cough. The wound on his side, the one that damned him to suffering and death, is fully healed and looks years old instead of mere days.

Yugao flings herself out of Kurosaki’s arms, crosses the room in two steps, and falls into Hayate’s lap. She would be embarrassed by the weakness of her legs if they hadn’t landed her exactly where she wanted to be.

“Are you okay?” asks Yugao.

“I’m fine,” says Hayate sounding surprised.

The door slams open, not an easy feat for a sliding door, and Naruto rushes into the room with half the house’s residents behind him.

“What the hell?” yells Konoha’s resident jinchuriki. He looks wild-eyed and panicked, not never a good thing to see on the Kyuubi’s living container. “The whole house was shaking and we couldn’t get the door open!”

“Do you still want to marry me?” asks Hayate quietly while Kakashi-taicho rallies enough to lecture Naruto about the importance of knocking.

“Yes,” says Yugao.

“Wedding in three days?” asks Hayate.

“Perfect,” says Yugao. “Gekko Yugao. Or Ishida Yugao, I guess.”

She and Hayate both glance at Ishida-sensei, who is resettling his glasses and looks slightly winded but otherwise unphased by curing Hayate of an incurable illness.

“It would make things simpler for the family register, but there were many different Quincy families once if you do choose to keep your name,” he says.

Ishida-sensei sounds like he means it. He very likely does mean it. And Yugao has spent a very large portion of her life wishing she was Gekko Yugao. But she is a kunoichi. She is trained to read body language. Yugao doesn’t miss the touch of wistfulness in Ishida-sensei’s eyes when he mention the family register. She looks at Hayate.

“A new name to go with a new start on life doesn’t sound so bad,” says Hayate.

Ishida-sensei doesn’t beam at them, but he does look quietly pleased, which Yugao suspects to be the same thing.

“Can we still have our wedding here?” asks Yugao. “Outside?”

“Of course,” says Ishida. “I would recommend the orchard. It has a lovely open space in the center.”

“That sounds wonderful,” says Yugao.

It is wonderful. In the orchard, the trees bear crops of slowly ripening fruits. The open space Ishida-sensei mentioned is a tiny meadow full of summer wildflowers. The food is simple but delicious. Yugao’s kimono, a gift from Ishida-sensei, is so perfectly tailored that she can hide her sword beneath its folds. Most of their friends are in-village and can attend the service, even if for some that means watching from a distance in porcelain masks. And most important of all, Hayate is gloriously alive.

After the guests have left and the youngest children are in bed but before Yugao and Hayate leave to begin their honeymoon—five days at one of the most prestigious Hyuuga-owned spas, a joint gift from Kakashi, Gai, and Zabuza of all people—Kurosaki walks into the main room carrying a scroll as tall as he is and twice as wide. He sets it on the floor with a thud.

“ _ I cannot believe your dad kept this thing in a self-storage unit all those years, _ ” says Kurosaki. He sounds faintly incredulous, even if Yugao can’t understand the actual words.

_ “It was climate-controlled! And the scroll is full of reishi. It wasn’t going to deteriorate,” _ says Ishida-sensei in clear protest.

“What is that?” asks Yugao. She’s tired and would like to have some alone time with her husband, but she is also a kunoichi with a mystery dropped in front of her.

“This is the Quincy family register,” says Kurosaki.

It’s not the official family register they turned over to the Hokage’s office. That one goes back only enough generations to show that Kurosaki and Ishida are related and now includes Yugao and Hayate as Ishida-sensei’s children. In the eyes of the village, they’re considered retainers of the Uzumaki Clan now, and Naruto can petition on their behalf before the Hokage.

“Why is it so big?” asks Hayate.

“It has the name of every Quincy from Yhwach down,” says Ishida-sensei. “Yhwach was the first, more than a thousand years ago.”

Yugao isn’t the only one with her mouth hanging open. The shinobi clans go back centuries, but even the most complete clan records aren’t reliable for after two or three hundred years.

“Do you know what happened to him?” asks Hayate.

“That is a long story that you probably need to hear, but later,” says Kurosaki. “Let’s get you written in.”

He sets the scroll on its side and with Naruto’s help unrolls it once unveiling hundreds of names. Kurosaki-san and Ishida-sensei start preparing two separate ink trays. It’s not entirely surprising to see them adding a few drops of their blood into the mix. Clans trust and deal in blood, clans with kekkei genkai doubly so. 

In the meantime, Yugao isn’t the only one to lean in and examine the family tree. 

The names are written in unfamiliar letters, but she can recognize repeating symbols that she guesses are family names. There are other symbols too that Yugao suspect to be numbers recounting birth and death dates. 

The names are color-coded. Some are light blue, some are dark blue, and some are black. At the bottom there is a single name in bright red, several in dark red, and one in dark purple outlined in white.

Yugao has dozens of questions. “What do the colors mean?”

“Light blue are pure-blooded Quincy, dark blue are Quincy with human ancestors, black are humans, red is  _ shinigami _ , dark red  _ shinigami _ and human,” says Ishida-sensei. “Kurosaki is the one in purple.”

Yugao has so many new questions. What does he mean black are “humans”? What the heck is a  _ shinigami _ ? Why is Kurosaki a different color from everyone in his family including, if she’s reading this scroll correctly, his child? Kurosaki doesn’t look old enough to have a wife and child. Though he has been raising Naruto for, huh, almost a decade soon. Maybe that’s a Uzumaki thing? But Ishida-sensei looks young too, and he doesn’t even have chakra!

“Is the red an Uzumaki thing?” asks Karin twirling a finger through her red hair.

“No,” says Ishida-sensei. “It’s true that House Shiba are the only  _ shinigami _ related to the Uzumaki Clan, but all  _ shinigami  _ have red _ spirit ribbons. _ ”

Yugao isn’t the only one to look confused after that attempt at an explanation. She’s also curious as to why Kurosaki’s father comes from a house rather than a clan. When Yugao thinks of houses, she thinks of trading houses or noble houses. For all his success with fireworks, Kurosaki’s never been interested in expanding his business. 

Hayate’s still stuck on Ishida-sensei’s reasoning behind the colors. “Uh, humans?” asks Hayate sounding slightly concerned.

“Ordinary humans without powers,” says Ishida-sensei. “You are still human.”

“Why is Ichi-nii a different color from everybody else?” asks Naruto.

“That would be because of some extremely illegal, unethical, and unwise human experimentation done before I was born,” says Kurosaki-san. “But it meant that I was born and that I didn’t explode at birth, so I can’t complain too much.”

There is pause as everyone digests this matter-of-fact summation.

“I am glad you didn’t explode at birth, Ichigo-san,” says Sai.

“Thank you, Sai,” says Ichigo. “That was a nice thing to say.”

Yugao remembers that Sai is one of six former ROOT living in Uzumaki residence. He is supposed to be learning how to be a person after being treated as nothing but a weapon for most of his life. Yugao suddenly finds herself deeply concerned with what Sai and the others will be like when they strike out on their own.

“Will any of our theoretical children…” begins Hayate.

Yugao blushes fiercely. They have never discussed children. There had always been the knowledge that Hayate would die early and Yugao’s career in ANBU meant that children, if she ever had children, would come much later. Now they both have time.

“Kurosaki’s circumstances were unique, but you will pass on your abilities to your children,” says Ishida-sensei. “Now, what year were you born?”

Using Fire Country characters, Ishida-sensei carefully inks Hayate’s name beneath his in dark blue ink, writing “new blood” underneath the name, and inking in Hayate’s birth year. He draws half of a dark blue line next to it. Kurosaki hands him the second ink pad and her own name is written in black next to Hayate’s. Ishida-sensei connecting her name to Hayate’s with half a line of ink shouldn’t feel official, not after the ceremony and  all the legal papers they had to sign, but they’re both official Ishida now, part of a clan stretching back more than a thousand years.

“Have you ever unrolled the whole thing?” asks Yugao looking at the monstrous scroll.

“Yeah, we had to write in Yhwach’s death year after we finally killed him,” says Kurosaki.

“Yhwach, the first Quincy, from a thousand years ago” says Hayate slowly.

“Like I said, a long story,” says Kurosaki. Clearly, he’s missing the point.

Ishida-sensei cleared his throat. “Most Quincy have perfectly normal lifespans. If you aren’t killed in battle, I expect you might see a century but not much longer.”

Yugao has never worried about Hayate outliving her. It’s a surprisingly pleasant thought. Though she suspects Hayate doesn’t feel the same way, or maybe he did, when he thought she would outlive him.

“The regenerative powers of chakra suggest that most shinobi who do not die in battle or irreparably damage their chakra coils should live to at least a century,” adds Ishida-sensei.

“That’s good to know,” says Hayate. He’s slowly relaxing beside her. Yugao approves of this immensely.

“When you get back from your honeymoon, Ishida can teach you all the Quincy stuff,” says Kurosaki. Yugao is interested in the history, but she doesn’t know how much use purifying wounds will be on the battlefield as compared to actually healing them with medical chakra. Then Ichigo says, “I think you’ll like  _ blut vene. _ After you master it, you’re immune to all blood-borne poisons and diseases.”

Yugao stifles a gasp. Hayate’s eyes go wide. Even Kakashi-taicho and his little students look startled at this news. To be completely immune to blood-borne poisons, most shinobi would give up a limb for that sort of advantage. If being a Quincy is really like having a kekkei genkai, it’s an advantage that Hayate can pass on to their theoretical future children.

“Archery first,” says Ishida-sensei.

“I learned  _ blut vene _ before I learned how to do the bow thing,” protests Kurosaki.

“Yes, you did, you freak of nature,” says Ishida-sensei not unkindly. “Archery first. Both of you.”

“Honeymoon first,” says Yugao. She remembers watching Ishida-sensei train the kids on how to use a bow. These days, they’re probably the best archers outside the Land of Iron. She’ll need a week with Hayate, with her husband, to bolster her spirit for that trial.

Hayate takes her callused hand in his and smiles at her, gentle and kind. Yugao decides it doesn’t matter how long Ishida-sensei makes them train with a bow or how old or how human Ishida-sensei and Kurosaki-san really are. Yugao’s happiness cannot be matched by anyone alive under the sun. Hayate is alive and they are married. She’s going to make sure he stays that way.

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes, you accidentally write several thousand words of a chapter you weren’t even planning. I guess indirectly saving Hayate from Baki and Kabuto was not enough for me? (Apparently, we’re putting to rest all the ghosts.) You also write it at least five chapters before you can post it without giving any important plot points away. Argh!
> 
> I use italics for emphasis, and I also use them to indicate Ichigo and Uryu are speaking Japanese. It wasn’t a problem for me visually until this chapter when I wanted Yugao to emphasize a lot of things right after one of the others said something in a foreign language. But I’m x-amount of chapters into the story, and I’m not changing it now!
> 
> Thanks for reading. Please review!


End file.
